A Second Chance
by Enhas
Summary: After his death, the Professor has a horrible secret to tell Leela and Fry. Orignally posted as Love into Death and Know the Answer, now combined.
1. Leela

Author's Note: I don't own Futurama or anything to do with it, and this is strictly a non-profit only thing.

Originally known as _Love into Death_, this has been combined along with _Know the Answer_ into one story. The first part is from Leela's point of view.. these two stories arose from a morbid idea I had after watching **Time Keeps on Slipping** yet again. I choose to go down paths that the show didn't and never would, and if you don't like that.. leave now.

Despite how angst-ridden most of my stories are, I love Futurama and think it is one of the best television shows ever made. There is a little Fry, Leela and Bender in all of us.

* * *

I suppose all of this started when the Professor died. Nobody expected it to happen so soon, even though he was a very old man.. at least he died peacefully, in his sleep. After his funeral service, there was a will reading in which Cubert inherited most of Planet Express and the Professor's possessions. Fry also received a good chunk of Planet Express.. apparently, the Professor had taken a liking to him after all despite his idiocy. 

Fry is my world.. seriously. Despite the many times I have rejected him in the past, he always came back stronger and more willing than ever. It wasn't until the _Leela: Orphan of the Stars_ opera that I realized once and for all that he really _did_ love me, and how much of a fool I was for ignoring him for years. We have been married for three years and have the sweetest little girl together, and I love them both more than anything else in the world.

Everything was fine.. but what happened next was just horrible. Now, remember what I just told you about Fry and my family.. none of what I am about to tell you can change any of that. But, after hearing the truth.. a part of me died that day that is never going to come back. I still feel to this day that it was all my fault, no matter what anybody tries to convince me otherwise.

The Professor had also left behind a holo-recording with the request that it be viewed at Planet Express by only myself and Fry. An odd request to be sure, but we followed through with it. Fry joked how it might be some secret space treasure map, and getting all excited and rubbing his hands together. Oh, how I wish it was something that simple!

The first thing that the two of us saw on the viewscreen when the recording started was the Professor and Bender standing side by side. Both looked very distraught, and Bender seemed to have been crying recently.

"First of all, I don't remember doing any of this. I'm gonna have the Professor blank my memories out later. It's better if I don't remember any of it." Bender said.

"Ah, yes.. I'll do that later. Anyway, I plan to outlive you all so if you are watching this.. then I have met with an untimely demise far too soon in my prime!" the Professor said, and we laughed. We wouldn't be laughing for long.

He continued. "Depending on my dementia, I may have well forgotten it all anyway in the future.. but I have a terrible and dark secret to tell you two. It would be best if you never told anybody else what we are about to tell you."

Bender spoke up. "It's a few days after the time skips and Globetrotters. I was out for one of my usual nights on the town.. you know, drinking and more drinking until I ran out of money or stole some more. I came home and went into me and Fry's apartment to offer him something to drink.. he was still pretty depressed over the divorce with Leela. There was no answer when I yelled for him, so I went into his room to see him.. and he was dead!"

I remember gasping in shock. Fry said that Bender had to be wrong, because he wasn't dead and didn't remember being dead.. that was kind of funny now that I think about it.

"He was just lying on his bed, and he actually looked happy! I don't know nothing about human medicine, but for some reason I grabbed him and ran to Planet Express and took him to the Professor."

"He was too late.. Fry had been dead for hours and there was nothing I could do.." The Professor said. "Philip J. Fry died this very night, in the year of 3002. Now, I'll pause for a bit so you can discuss and so I can use the bathroom!"

We did. Fry didn't seem to know what to think. Hell, I didn't know what to think myself.. only that I knew that there was something very wrong. Bender was oddly silent on the video and lowered his head, mourning for Fry.. I guess. When the Professor came back, we stopped talking and continued to watch the rest of the confusing video.

"Now.. I bet you're all thinking that I'm absolutely insane, and I may well be.. but Fry is dead, but also alive. I don't know how to tell you this, Fry.. but you're a clone! The original version of yourself committed suicide!"

I wanted to smash the recording right then and there. This had to be a joke.. Fry would never do something like that to himself! Meanwhile, Fry seemed to be staring at the screen in utter disbelief.

"I downloaded the entire contents of his brain.. which wasn't much, I tell you! I'm going to show you some images from the last day of his life.. and then you'll believe me!" the Professor said, and activated something off-screen. The viewscreen changed to a first-person view of someone walking into an alley towards a rather shady person.

"Do you have anything.. that can ease pain?" a voice asked. Fry. It was Fry!

"I have just the thing, kid.." the other man said, and reached into his coat. He pulled out a jar of something that I've never forgotten about and will never forget.. space-bee honey. "Just remember.. three spoons and you'll be sleepin' like you've never slept before! Six feet under! And no money-back guarantee! Get my drift?"

"Yeah, I suppose I do." Fry said, handing the man some money. The screen then switched to the inside of Robot Arms, where Fry used to live with Bender a few years back. It was still that creepy first-person view, and Fry was holding a spoon filled with the honey close to his mouth.

"Already took two.. one more and that's it. No going back. I've got nothing here anyway, Leela doesn't love me and she never will!" he said to himself, and plunged the last spoon deep into his mouth. He then went to lie down on his bed, and before long his vision started to fade to black. The last word to come from his lips was my own name.. Leela, before he fell asleep, never to wake up again.

"As you can see, Fry did a very stupid thing. But then, I went and worked the hardest I ever have in my entire damn life and cloned him a new body in the span of a few hours! I put all of his memories there except for the space-bee honey and suicide ones, obviously.. and I'm going to be sure to pump him full of anti-depressants for a while so he doesn't do something like this again, because I'm not going through something like this ever again! Bender, take the camera and follow me.."

He did as he was told with no complaint, and followed the Professor to the lounge. On the couch was Fry, snoring away in front of an _Elzar_ rerun with some drool running down the side of his mouth. Elzar could be heard in the background saying something about a _Grilled Martian Kangaroo_.

"There should be no difference.. he is a perfect copy of Fry in every single way! I wanted to make him smarter but Bender here wanted him to be the same dim goofball that he's always been.. and thus, now you know my terrible secret. Fry, you might be a clone but don't waste your life because I'm not giving you another one!"

"Yeah, you don't know what it was like for me, either.. finding your best friend dead and nothing I could do about it!" Bender said, and stepped in front of the camera. "Listen, meatbag.. Fry. Don't waste your second chance! Whether you're with Leela or not, there's no reason to just go and kill yourself! Now, I need to.."

The recording ended there, because the clone-Fry was starting to wake up on the couch and they didn't want him to know what they were doing. I didn't know what to think, and I burst out crying.

"I'm a copy.. I'm not even the real thing!" Fry cried, and I went over and hugged him. I could see the tears running down his face as well.

"Yes, you are! You're still the man I love, clone or not!" I said. "I fell in love with _you_, and nothing is going to change that! What the other you did was very stupid and was the coward's way out.. but I can't blame you for that!"

"You heard what he said! If he hadn't drugged me up for a while, I might have went and killed myself again!"

"He did that because he cared about you! Did you see how horrible and tired he looked after what he did.. bringing you back to life!"

We stopped arguing for a while, and Fry wiped my tears away gently with his fingers. "I don't know what to say.. I'm a clone, but I'm still me and I love you. Leela, I never told you this.. but the biggest reason I was depressed wasn't because of the divorce."

This was something new. Fry had told me many things about his life, but was always oddly silent about the whole time skips period. He continued on. "Leela.. I made a message in the stars for you, and that is why you married me the first time. But you never got to see it at all before it was blown up.. and it must have drove the other me to kill myself.. uh, himself, I mean."

For the rest of the day, we spent our time alone just talking about the recording and everything else we could think of. Clone or not, he is the man I fell in love with.. my husband, and the father of my child. I kept reminding him that everything after the time skips was _his_ own life, and for him to stop thinking of himself as a second-rate copy. I had always admired Fry from the moment I met him.. but it wasn't really until I was stung by the space-bee that I realized that I had true, romantic feelings for him. Before that, I only saw him as a friend and nothing more.

I feel guilty, like I should have done more to save him. I should have at least tried to speak to Fry more after the time skips, because I could tell that there was something very wrong with him. He would spend so much time alone and not talk to anyone..

We both agreed to never tell anyone about the contents of the recording, and I destroyed it.

Then, one day.. Fry remembered something quite eerie. When I asked him about it, he didn't answer me and wanted me to follow him. So I did, going through the tubes with him until we stopped at the last place I wanted to be.. a graveyard. Yes, I have a weird fear of graveyards.. but it's not exactly the worst fear someone can have.

Fry was still quiet until he stopped at a small headstone and kneeled down. I kneeled too so I could get a closer look, and nearly fainted once I had made sure that I had just read what I thought I did:

PHILIP J. FRY

1974 - 3002

"I remember me and Bender went through here one night. He showed this to me and laughed, that someone else had the exact same name and birthday as me. Oh man, this is creepy.. this is my own grave! Nobody looks for their own grave, so they must have figured I'd never find it."

"No, it's not your grave.. you still have a long time to live yet if I have anything to say about it!" I said. "Fry.. he is _not_ you! He made a horrible, terrible decision that was mostly my fault! I feel guilty every single day! Not only because he's dead, but because if he didn't die nothing might even be the same now! I might not have you, and our daughter! I feel like I killed a man just so I could have another.. even if it's the same one!"

"Leela, don't blame yourself!" Fry said. "If he wasn't already dead, I'd kill him for what he's doing to you! The Professor is right.. I've been given a second chance and I'm not gonna waste it, Leela! I love you and our daughter and nothing is gonna change it! I won't ever leave you the way he did.. you can count on that!"

He comforted me with a kiss, and we returned home. To this day, nobody knows the true story.. but now you do. I have one final secret, that not even Fry knows.. every single day, I stop in that same graveyard and leave a single white flower on his grave. I always wonder how things would have turned out if everything had went differently.. if I had seen that message in the stars and married him, or even if he hadn't died.

I'll never know. All I can do is remember the troubled young man who tried his hardest to win me over, but failed.. and loved me into death.

* * *

The next chapter presents Fry's point of view, and how it affected him. I think being a clone would take quite a bit of getting used to, and weird.. 


	2. Fry

Author's Note: I don't own Futurama or anything to do with it, and this is strictly a non-profit only thing.

This was originally called _Know the Answer_. It's the same events as the last chapter, only told from Fry's point of view this time. It's longer, because he tends to ramble more.. especially about how he loves Leela.

I had a much easier time writing this version than I did _Love into Death_.. in fact, this came to be much clearer than anything else I wrote lately. Same warnings as the last chapter.

* * *

I've never been much for writing stuff, but I just have to get this down for some reason. It's a secret, so earth-shattering and bad that the universe might explode when you read it. Or space monkeys could invade New New York and enslave humanity. 

Well, not really. Even though Leela (my wife) and me promised to never tell anyone this, I'm writing this anyway because I caught her the other day writing stuff and thought that I'd get my version out too. It's not like anybody is going to see this until we're probably both dead and gone, but stuff always has a way of finding itself onto the internet some day. Did you know that I found my old bike from 1999 at an auction once?

Anyway, it's not that bad of a secret but we figure that it's easier if everyone doesn't find out.. I guess.

I've known Leela for a long time now. She's the first person I met with after I was unfrozen and we've been together ever since. Well, not together like that.. but we were really never apart from each other for long. We were good friends for a while but I never stopped trying to win her heart. It took a while, but I did it. She saw me for who I was.. and now I'm married to her and have a daughter with her. I really, really, REALLY love them and I'm glad that everything worked out and that we're all happy together.

Yeah, I'm mushy.. but Leela was and is the one reason that I live for, I think I had a dream or something once where I said something like that to Nibbler and he said something back.. but he can't talk, I think.

Anyway, the Professor died. He was my great-whatever nephew and I suppose my great-something grandson too. He left me some of Planet Express and I was really surprised because he always called me a moron and got mad at me a lot.. but sometimes he would give me this weird look that I didn't get for a while.. until I found out just what he was hiding.

He left a holo-video for me and Leela to watch back at Planet Express. I didn't know what could be on it.. but the first thing that came to my mind was treasure.

"Hey, Leela! What if it's some secret space treasure map and there's all ninja pirates and stuff guarding it?"

"I don't know.. I guess we'll find out soon enough. It has to be something pretty important though, ninja pirates or not.." Leela said, and then put the video into this futuristic VCR. The Professor and Bender popped up on the screen.. they both looked pretty tired and sad, especially Bender. It wasn't normal for him.

"First of all, I don't remember doing any of this. I'm gonna have the Professor blank my memories out later. It's better if I don't remember any of it." Bender said.

"Ah, yes.. I'll do that later. Anyway, I plan to outlive you all so if you are watching this.. then I have met with an untimely demise far too soon in my prime!"

The Professor might not have outlived us, but he did live a really long time. I can't imagine being that old and still being able to drink my daily Slurm quota, or being without Leela. I don't want to die first because I'd leave her all alone, but if she dies first then I'd be all alone.. I try not to think about it too much. What's important is how I spend the time I have now, and I realized it even more after I heard the rest of what the Professor and Bender had to say.

The Professor then said something about a terrible and dark secret that he had to tell. I figured that it can't be worse than all the other terrible and dark secrets he told us before, but I was wrong.

Bender then talked for a bit. "It's a few days after the time skips and Globetrotters. I was out for one of my usual nights on the town.. you know, drinking and more drinking until I ran out of money or stole some more. I came home and went into me and Fry's apartment to offer him something to drink.. he was still pretty depressed over the divorce with Leela. There was no answer when I yelled for him, so I went into his room to see him.. and he was dead!"

I remember thinking that Bender was just being an idiot, but I couldn't see any sign that he was telling anything other than the truth.. but it didn't make any sense! I didn't remember being dead!

"Leela, he's wrong! I'm not dead and I don't remember being dead!" I said, and looked over at Leela. She didn't answer back, but looked a bit shocked as anybody would be who just heard their husband was dead.

"He was just lying on his bed, and he actually looked happy! I don't know nothing about human medicine, but for some reason I grabbed him and ran to Planet Express and took him to the Professor." Bender said.

"He was too late.. Fry had been dead for hours and there was nothing I could do.. Philip J. Fry died this very night, in the year of 3002. Now, I'll pause for a bit so you can discuss and so I can use the bathroom!" The Professor said, and walked really slow out of the screen. Bender just stood there looking all sad and guilty, with his head down.

"What is this about, Fry?" Leela asked. "It doesn't make any sense!"

"I don't know Leela, honestly.. let's just wait until the Professor comes back. Maybe you should fast-forward it a bit since he usually takes forever in the bathroom!"

After a while, he came back. "Now.. I bet you're all thinking that I'm absolutely insane, and I may well be.. but Fry is dead, but also alive. I don't know how to tell you this, Fry.. but you're a clone! The original version of yourself committed suicide!"

At that point, it felt like my heart dropped into my stomach or something. I was thinking that he just had to be wrong, and I couldn't stop staring at the Professor and Bender on the screen.

_I can't be a clone!_ I thought. _I can remember everything.. how I was frozen and ended up here, meeting Leela.. how I'm actually my own grandfather, and of course the opera. That was the best night of my life because Leela finally loved and accepted me for who I was. I remember Seymour, Yancy.. everyone! I don't have any weird dots under my eyelids like Arnold Schwarzenegger in __**The Sixth Day**_!_ Oh yeah, that was a good movie! I was frozen when it was made but I watched it with Leela one night in our room.._

I must have been stunned for a while because the next thing I heard was my own voice. "Do you have anything.. that can ease pain?"

I focused on the screen and saw some guy standing in an alley. "I have just the thing, kid.." he said, and he took something out of a coat pocket. It was a jar of honey, but not normal honey.. space-bee honey. Leela told me all about it after her coma.. even though it was just a dream, she had come close to killing herself before she woke up. "Just remember.. three spoons and you'll be sleepin' like you've never slept before! Six feet under! And no money-back guarantee! Get my drift?"

"Yeah, I suppose I do."

That was my voice again.. was this from my memories? I found out that it had to be, because then it showed the inside of Bender's apartment where I used to stay with him before I got married. Somebody was holding a spoon full of honey in the air, and the hand holding it was shaking.

"Already took two.. one more and that's it. No going back. I've got nothing here anyway, Leela doesn't love me and she never will!"

That was me again! He shoved the honey into his mouth and then started to fall asleep.. fading to black like the end of a movie. He said Leela's name before he fell asleep.. before he died. The spoon dropped from his fingers just before it ended.

The Professor came back up on the screen. "As you can see, Fry did a very stupid thing. But then, I went and worked the hardest I ever have in my entire damn life and cloned him a new body in the span of a few hours! I put all of his memories there except for the space-bee honey and suicide ones, obviously.. and I'm going to be sure to pump him full of anti-depressants for a while so he doesn't do something like this again, because I'm not going through something like this ever again! Bender, take the camera and follow me.."

I didn't want to watch the rest of it. Leela was already on the verge of tears, and I was too.. thinking at the time that my whole life was a sham and a fraud. I then saw myself sleeping on the couch in the lounge, and the Professor said how I was a perfect clone in every way.. down to the dumbness. Gee, thanks.. Professor!

The last thing on the video was Bender telling me not to waste my second chance no matter what. _I won't, Bender.._

I couldn't take it anymore. It's said that men aren't supposed to cry, but I did. A lot. Leela did too and she came over and gave me a big hug.. one of the ones that I really like that cheers me up when I'm sad.

"You're still the man I love, clone or not! I fell in love with _you_, and nothing is going to change that! What the other you did was very stupid and was the coward's way out.. but I can't blame you for that!" she said.

"You heard what he said! If he hadn't drugged me up for a while, I might have went and killed myself again!" I said.

"He did that because he cared about you! Did you see how horrible and tired he looked after what he did.. bringing you back to life!" Leela said, and we went on like this for a while until we were both too tired to argue anymore. I wiped her tears away and told her that I loved her. I then told her something I had kept secret for years.. the message in the stars that I made for her (actually not me, but it's easier to just say it was me instead of the "original Fry".. the clone stuff gets weird sometimes). I remember being depressed over it.. but not as much as I should have been. Plus, there was like a day or so that I can't remember.. there was no denying the truth now.

"Fry.. why didn't you tell me?"

"You would have never believed me.. nobody would have. I thought that was my one chance to win your heart, and I blew it big time! But why did I.. the other me just give up on everything? And why was I brought back.. this isn't even my life, it's someone else's! Someone else who died years ago!"

I wanted to leave and be alone for a while, but I knew that Leela needed me more so I stayed with her. We spent like hours just talking about stuff.. that I did have my own life after all. It was me who reunited her with her parents. It was me who was there for her after she left that jerk Chaz. It was me who sat.. hell, _lived_ by her bedside for two weeks after she nearly died after a space-bee sting. And it was me who wrote and played _Leela: Orphan of the Stars_ and saved her from the Robot Devil. Even if most of my memories aren't really mine, I do have my own and they're mine.. and nobody can take them away.

I'm very lucky.. most people don't get second chances or do-overs for the things they do in life. But I'm lucky that I did.. the Professor and Bender both cared about me more than I ever thought they would. I can see why Bender wanted his memories erased.. it must have been really hard on him.

I asked Leela when she first knew that she loved me. She said that she always admired me from when we first met and liked me as a friend, but it wasn't until she was stung by the space-bee that she really knew for sure.. but she still didn't admit it for quite a while (until the opera) because she was scared to. Imagine that.. Turanga Leela, the toughest and fearless, most beautiful woman in the galaxy.. scared to tell me that she loves me!

Leela had a dream when she was in the coma.. that I died and that she was really sad and at the end of it, she wanted to die and be with me forever in death because she was having really romantic dreams with me in them. Somehow, she heard that I wanted her to wake up.. it scares me a lot to think of what would have happened if she didn't. She would probably be dead and I wouldn't have her or my daughter.

As for me.. I don't know when I first _really_ loved Leela. I thought I did when I had the worms, but I can't remember how much of that was actually me thinking (again, not actually me.. but still me in a way). When the time skips happened and we were married and divorced in like a second, I didn't feel good.. but when I saw _I LOVE YOU, LEELA_ that I had written in the stars being blown up, I knew then that I really did love her and that she was the only one, and that I would just keep trying harder.

I did.. but the other me didn't. His story ended a few days later, and nobody knows it except me and Leela.. and anybody reading this, I guess. I remembered seeing a grave with my name and birthday on it but I thought it was just someone else.. and in a way, it is. But it scares me.. I could have ended up just like him!

When we got to the graveyard, it didn't take long before I found it because Bender had left a stash of empty beer bottles that were still there. I moved them out of the way and looked down.

"I remember me and Bender went through here one night. He showed this to me and laughed, that someone else had the exact same name and birthday as me. Oh man, this is creepy.. this is my own grave! Nobody looks for their own grave, so they must have figured I'd never find it." I said.

"No, it's not your grave.. you still have a long time to live yet if I have anything to say about it!" Leela said. "Fry.. he is _not_ you! He made a horrible, terrible decision that was mostly my fault! I feel guilty every single day! Not only because he's dead, but because if he didn't die nothing might even be the same now! I might not have you, and our daughter! I feel like I killed a man just so I could have another.. even if it's the same one!"

I felt terrible at how Leela was feeling. Right then and there, I made a promise to myself that I would never leave her. I may not be a smart guy but I've learned that suicide is not the answer to anything. Maybe _The Scary Door_ is, but not suicide. "Leela, don't blame yourself! If he wasn't already dead, I'd kill him for what he's doing to you! The Professor is right.. I've been given a second chance and I'm not gonna waste it, Leela! I love you and our daughter and nothing is gonna change it! I won't ever leave you the way he did.. you can count on that!"

I moved closer and kissed my wife, which made her a bit happier and put a smile on her face.. I like that. I put the bottles into a trash can that was a few feet away and brushed off a bit of dirt that was on the headstone, and stopped to think for a few seconds while I was staring down at it.

_What you did was wrong and really hurt Leela, the Professor and Bender.. but you're still me and I won't ever forget you, and who you were._

Leela thinks that I don't know, but I followed her one day back to the graveyard without her seeing me. And the next, and the next. She always leaves a flower there and some days looks happy, but other days she cries.

But I have a secret too. Sometimes I go there by myself to just look at the grave. Sometimes I pick up one of Leela's sweet-smelling flowers and enjoy the scent. But most of the time, I just wonder.

What if _he_ hadn't died?

It would have been a great question to ask the _What-If Machine_, but it's been missing for years now and nobody's ever found it. And I think that in a way it's good that I can't find it.. because I might not want to know the answer.

* * *

And that's the end. Even though Fry did get a second chance (kind of), Leela especially was very hurt by what happened and would never fully heal. As one who could have given up on everything not long ago myself, it scares me to think how it would have affected those I loved. 


End file.
